others. Men do not lay up in store a list of ideas, to be provided with spoken signs when some convenient season shall come; nor do they prepare a catalogue of words, to which ideas shall be attached when found: when the thing is perceived, the idea conceived, they find in the existing resources of speech the means of its expression—a name which formerly belonged to something else in some way akin with it; a combination of words, a phrase, which perhaps remains a phrase, perhaps is fused into, or replaced by, a single word. Thus, for example, men were proposed in ancient Rome for the free suffrages of their fellow-citizens, and were, without difficulty, variously described as such, before any distinctive appellation for one in such a plight had been established; but the fortuitous circumstance that Roman usage required those who were openly seeking office to be candidatos, 'dressed in white (candidus),' led by degrees to their designation, pregnantly, as candidati; and now, through nearly the whole civilized world, he who aspires to election or selection to any place or station is styled a candidate.
Thus it is that the reason why anything is called as we are accustomed to call it is a historical reason; it amounts to this: that, at some time in the past—either when the thing was first apprehended, or at some later period—it was convenient for men to apply to it this name. And the principal item in this convenience was, that certain other things were already named so and so. Until we arrive at the very beginnings of speech (the character and origin of which must be reserved for discussion at a later period of these lectures), every name comes, by combination, derivation, or simple transfer of meaning, from some other name or names: men do not create new words out of hand; they construct them of old material. At the time and under the circumstances, then, when each term acquired its given significance, the possession of certain other resources of expression, combined with certain usages of speech and habits of thought, and influenced by external circumstances, caused men's choice to fall upon it rather than upon any other combination of sounds. Thus every word has its etymology or derivation,
